


Crossroads

by sifuhotman



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, M/M, Suna Rintarou-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28778952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sifuhotman/pseuds/sifuhotman
Summary: Shortly after the devastating loss to Karasuno, Osamu announces that he's quitting volleyball after high school.It comes as a disappointment to many people, which Suna knows must hurt, so he decides to come up with a way to show his support.
Relationships: Miya Osamu/Suna Rintarou
Comments: 29
Kudos: 226
Collections: SunaOsa





	Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sketchedsmiles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sketchedsmiles/gifts).



> For [Carol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sketchedsmiles), whom I owe many fics.

He tells Suna on the bus ride home from Nationals. The painful loss from Karasuno hasn’t really faded over the past couple of days. The sting is enough to choke Suna’s thoughts and leave him in a mental fog, one that he knows will clear up once they’re back in the comfort of the Inarizaki gym, distracted by the mundane lull of their daily routines.

Suna replays each point of his in his mind and how they’d stacked up in the beginning only to be cleverly slowed in the end. He hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. And he’d been a fool to think that there wouldn’t be a middle blocker patient enough to thwart him eventually. Even now, Suna’s mind flares with annoyance at the mechanical and persistent Number Eleven.

But, well—Suna learned his lesson, and he’ll take what he’s learned and bring it back to the court next game. It’s not the end for him, and it won’t be for a while.

“Osamu.” Suna pokes at Osamu’s side with his elbow. They’re seated beside one another in the bus ride back home, thighs brushing against one another as Suna readjusts to get in a more comfortable position. Everyone else is knocked out around him, a byproduct of the adrenaline rush of playing a ridiculous team and being knocked out after their first round. Gin is mumbling something in his seat across the aisle, and next to him, Atsumu snores with a pinched, constipated expression on his face. Suna has already taken close ups, saved it in his album, and covertly changed the Inarizaki Volleyball Group Chat icon to a particularly unflattering photo.

Osamu, however, is wide awake, gazing out at the horizon as the bus speeds down the highway. His elbow sits propped against the window, chin resting in the palm of his hand. Suna blinks at his stillness; it doesn't even look like he's breathing. “Hey.”

Osamu startles, like he hadn’t even realized that Suna had spoken to him. “Huh?”

“You're not tired?”

Osamu shakes his head. His coarse, dyed hair flops back and forth. Suna loves Osamu’s hair.

“What’s on your mind?”

Osamu sighs and leans back against the creaky leather seat of the bus, tilting his skull against the headrest. He stares up, and Suna gets a generous glimpse of his profile. Osamu still has a youthful softness to his face that isn’t twisted by the over-the-top expressions that Atsumu wears. “I think you already know what’s on my mind.”

Yeah, Suna does know. The Inarizaki third years are taking the loss better than their juniors, even though it’s their last game of their high school careers. Hell, Kita had even smiled, and smiles from Kita are hard to come by. That is what hurts the most, knowing that he and the rest of the underclassmen had failed their senpais.

Like Kita said, they hadn’t technically done anything wrong, but that doesn’t make the reality any easier to confront. “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Suna says. “There’s always next year.”

“Mhm.”

Suna hesitates. He’s never been one to pry open vulnerability from people, nor has he offered much vulnerability in return. But he feels compelled to, witnessing the lingering exhaustion and turmoil dancing across Osamu’s downturned mouth. “What’s bothering you?”

“It’s nothin’.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Are you _sure_?”

Osamu glances over at Suna, and curiosity takes over his eyes. “Suna—”

Suna places one calculated hand on Osamu’s shoulder and squeezes. They have casual touches like this, sometimes—a high five when one of them makes a point, a head ruffle to piss the other one off. A shoulder squeeze is safe. It’s comforting, and it doesn’t overstep any of the unspoken boundaries the two have agreed upon since becoming comrades, classmates, and friends.

Osamu’s eyes snap down to Suna’s hand, and Suna withdraws quickly. His palm is cold from the loss of body warmth. “It’s just a game. It’s not the end of the world.”

Osamu breathes a sigh out, and he mumbles something under his breath.

“Huh?” Suna leans in closer. “I can’t hear you.”

“I said…” Osamu purses his lips, and the hairs on Suna's neck stand up. “You can’t tell anyone.”

Suna’s heart skips a beat in anticipation. “I won’t.”

“Alright.” Osamu pauses again, and he turns his face to the window. It takes several breaths for him to speak again in an aching, quiet voice, “It ain’t just a game anymore. It’s a countdown.” Suna’s mouth falls open in a wordless exclamation. “Next year’s my last, Suna. I ain’t playin’ volleyball after high school.”

Suna blinks. “What?” Of all confessions, that certainly wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “You're not?”

Osamu shakes his head, mouth pressed into a tight line.

“Oh.” Another pause of disbelief. “Why?”

Osamu chews on his bottom lip and Suna wants to poke at the frown between his eyebrows. They’re silent for a while, Osamu’s words hanging heavy in the air, and Suna doesn’t know if he should ask follow up questions or just accept the fact that the future he’d thought of—that he, Atsumu, and Osamu would go pro one day and play alongside and against each other—was fabricated on an assumption Osamu shattered in a heartbeat.

He supports him, of course. Osamu is his best friend, and he trusts his judgement. That doesn’t mean he isn’t disappointed about it.

Osamu breaks the silence to elaborate. “I’ve always known I wanted to work in food service. I already toldja, Sunarin.”

Osamu _had_ told him—told everyone, actually, but Suna may have sort of interpreted it as a thinly veiled threat to get Atsumu to stop acting out when they played together.

“Have you told anyone else yet?”

Osamu shakes his head.

“Are you going to?”

Osamu shrugs.

“Ah. Well.” Suna gives him another shoulder par and resists his urge to pull Osamu into a comforting hug. He doesn’t think Osamu would appreciate it. “No one can tell you what to do. Do what you want.”

Osamu’s eyes linger on Suna’s stoic face, searching, though Suna doesn’t know what he’s searching for. Validation? Praise? Someone to talk him out of it?

Friendship with Osamu comes naturally, but there are some things Suna isn’t sure about. Like how to talk Osamu down when he starts acting out, riled up by Atsumu, how to comfort him when he’s upset, or how to look back at Osamu without revealing the gentle tug at his heart. 

“Thanks,” he finally says, so quiet that the hum of the highway almost swallows it whole, so quiet that if Suna hadn’t been slumped millimeters away from him, he might not have caught it.

But Suna hears him with his whole chest—with Osamu, he always does.

* * *

Osamu is even more quiet than usual. They go to practice and go to class and eat lunch, and after school they walk home with their feet crunching against gravel. The first week is the hardest; it always is after a devastating loss. But this one is a tougher pill to swallow.

Several times, Suna catches himself wanting to ask about it. But Osamu hasn’t mentioned it, so he doesn't bring it up. One week passes, then two. Sixteen days pass until Osamu broaches the topic again.

“I’m gonna tell Tsumu,” he says one day as Suna sips on his juice box at lunch time.

Suna pauses. His chair is tilted backwards at an obscenely dangerous angle, and he gently sets it back down on all fours. “About volleyball?”

“Yeah.”

Suna pauses. “Okay.” Osamu doesn’t say anymore, because some things don’t need to be said.

* * *

Suna tells himself that the twins will work out their problems. He’s seen it before, even after they get into literal brawling matches that result in scraps along their chins and knees, silent treatments, and passive aggressive communication that often results in Gin acting as a mediator between the two.

But this one feels different. It isn’t a small disagreement. It is, in its own way, a destruction of sorts, a crumpled bond between a setter and his go-to spiker, a bond that’s been trampled and stuffed in the trash. Suna always thought that there’d never be anyone more fit for being Atsumu’s partner than Osamu, and he’d assumed that meant they’d be spiking and setting and winning and losing with each other for the rest of their lives. He knows Atsumu has assumed the same, too.

Suna knows he’s disappointed that Osamu won’t be joining them in the big leagues one day, but he knows that for Atsumu, it isn’t just a disappointment—it’s a betrayal. 

Suna sighs as he slips his feet into his sneakers. Atsumu has already stormed off campus, muttering obscenities to himself, and the rest of their team has dispersed to go home. He's sure that Osamu is here somewhere, but he also understands the need for privacy. He gets that way, too, after a particularly stinging loss.

Suna pokes his head back into the locker room to see if Osamu’s still there, because his bag is left on the floor of the gym. The only sounds that greet him are the lone drips of water against the tiles on the floor. He opens his mouth and is about to call out, _Osamu,_ but a sharp sound interrupts him.

In the locker room—a quiet sniffle.

Suna backs away from the room without a sound and pulls out his phone to send a quick message to him: **I’m at the front gate.**

Osamu doesn’t reply, so Suna waits.

Ten minutes later, a shuffle of footsteps approaches, and Suna looks up from his phone to see Osamu with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his tracksuit. His head stoops down and Suna pretends he doesn’t see the rings of pink that line the whites of Osamu’s eyes.

“I got your stuff,” Suna says. He slides Osamu’s bag off his shoulder and hands it off, and Osamu mumbles a quiet thanks.

They don’t speak about it. Suna kicks at the ground, the echoes of their fight ringing in his ears. _Who says the one who sticks with volleyball is the more successful by default, huh?_ Osamu had said. _I made up my mind a long time ago, and that was that._

It _is_ just that: Osamu, despite his laid-back demeanor, is just as sure of himself as Atsumu is on the court. So when Osamu announces to Atsumu and the team that his third year will be his last year playing volleyball, Suna believes it. 

Suna has seen a lot of stupid fights that the Miya twins are notorious for. Actually, most of the time, he’s the one catching them in action on camera for the memories. He didn’t get this one on film, though, because it wasn’t an ordinary fight of Atsumu calling Osamu a scrub. This isn’t something they can fix with a game of Pro Evolution Soccer. 

“So if you’re gonna start cooking things for a living...” Suna breaks the silence despite his accelerated heart rate that demands to be felt. “What kind of food are you gonna make?”

Osamu slows down. He picks up his head and studies Suna, as if he’s trying to see if he’s kidding or not, or if Suna’s making fun of him the same way he pokes fun of Atsumu all the time. Suna merely raises his eyebrows, hoping that it communicates that he’s being genuine.

“If I’m bein’ honest, nothin’ too complicated.” Osamu answers with hesitation that Suna does not see often. There’s a flicker of fear in his eyes, and it wrenches Suna’s heart. He’s never wanted Osamu to think he’d make fun of him for choosing his own path. He’s never wanted Osamu to think he’d do anything but support him, especially when everyone else around him questions him.

“Not complicated?” Osamu nods. “Explain.”

“Y’know how you and Tsumu feel comforted by bein’ on the court?”

Suna tilts his head.

“Like, ya just feel like yer in yer element, and all that’s there is the ball and the net and the game and you.” Suna gets it, a little. He’s too comfortable on the court, probably, and it shows in his frequently lazy playing style, but he gets it. “That’s how I want people to feel when they eat my food. So prolly somethin’ homey, like onigiri or dumplings somethin’.” Osamu’s voice trails off at the end, and he looks away.

“Onigiri, huh.” Suna mulls it over, thinking about the shared onigiri they’d munch on while seated on the steps of their homes, bare feet digging into the dirt with sun on their shoulders.

“That’s very fitting.”

Osamu glances at Suna again, a wary look, and Suna gives him a reassuring nod. “I’ll eat anything you cook. You know that.”

Osamu cracks a small smile. It isn’t a lot, but it’s enough for the tight bands around Suna’s chest to loosen, and it tells him that the unexpected wild card Osamu’s become is still the best friend he’s always known.

* * *

Atsumu is a dick, as per usual, but he gets over it quicker than Suna expected. There’s a lingering grudge that grabs hold of his particularly snarky remarks, but Osamu brushes it off with an eyeroll and middle finger. _I’ll be the one that has a happier life, ya scrub!_ has become Atsumu’s signature catchphrase every time he’s displeased with something Osamu does.

To his credit, Osamu doesn’t take his decision as an excuse to mess around during practice. He’s as serious as ever, which Suna has come to admire about him. As someone who’s generally indifferent and puts in the easiest amount of effort as possible, Suna can’t imagine trying that hard at a sport that he’ll eventually part ways with.

But something about Osamu is different. A sense of loss sits on his shoulders in the moments where he spaces out, and Suna wonders if it’s the aftermath of rumors—rumors that Osamu is compromising his career in volleyball for fear that he won’t make it. The knowledge of the infamous Miya duo splitting up after high school has spread beyond just their team, and Suna knows at least half the whispers in their classroom are directed towards Osamu.

Suna doesn’t want to see him that way and wants nothing more than to affirm to Osamu he isn’t in the wrong—so he decides to do something about it.

* * *

If Suna’s being honest, he’s always known he’s had a favorite Miya. He jokes about it, especially when other people ask him. _Atsumu on Wednesdays,_ he’d answer with a smirk, _Osamu on Fridays._ Sometimes he shrugs and says he flips a hundred yen coin to decide which one he’s going to side with that day, to which Atsumu barks, _Am I worth only a hundred yen to ya, Rin?_

 _Shouldn’t ya be more offended that he uses probability to decide his favorite?_ Gin would say. _Loyalty ain’t mean jackshit to Sunarin._

But Suna knows that’s not true.

Loyalty, as he’s learned, can be found in the determined run up he sprints into as he makes his approach for a spike. It’s in the waiting as the twins hash out their stupid arguments and force the entire team to take sides. It’s in the mornings he shows up at the Miya house doorstep, every Sunday.

For Osamu, Suna’s loyalty can be found in an infinite number of places, but it gathers itself in the most unexpected way this time—in the kitchen. After several hours elbows deep in rice and dishes piling up in the sink—much to the confusion of his parents and sister—Suna decides to give Osamu more credit than Atsumu for choosing food over volleyball. Cooking, he’s decided, is even harder than nailing a nasty quick set from Atsumu’s fingertips.

Atsumu has always intimidated people, but Suna knows that, really, it’s Osamu people should be afraid of.

* * *

Suna knocks on the familiar splintered doors of the Miya family residence. It’s Sunday morning, which is the time their parents are out of the house for their weekly grocery shopping trip and Atsumu typically spends the day playing video games. This is the time when Suna and Osamu will often lounge around watching TV, pausing only to eat and run to the market for snacks.

Osamu opens the door. He’s in his pajamas, still, with loose sweatpants and a hoodie that Suna is convinced he’s seen Atsumu wear more than once. His hair sticks up like the Fukurodani Ace, and he doesn’t look like he’s rubbed all the sleep out of his eyes yet.

“Mornin’—” Osamu’s cut off by Suna thrusting a container in his hands. He fumbles a bit before accepting it, and Suna pushes past him into the familiar entryway of the Miya home. 

Suna kicks off his shoes and shrugs off his coat to hang it on the hook on the wall that’s reserved exclusively for him. “It’s for you.”

“It ain’t my birthday.” Osamu holds the container up to his eyes and squints at it.

“Duh. I know that.”

“Then why?”

Suna shrugs noncommittally, making a beeline for the couch. His shoulders are tight and he feels exhausted from the past three hours. He’d much rather run a set of ten suicide sprints than have to cook ever again. “Where’s Atsumu?”

“Roots touch up.”

“Ah. He finally went.”

“I know. He’s worse than I am.”

Suna snorts. “You don’t need to tell me that.”

Osamu sits on the couch next to him, cushions sinking underneath as he carefully pops open the cover. Suna’s fingers clench into tight fists as he wills his chest to calm down, watching carefully as Osamu’s eyes widen at the contents of the box.

The nori is peeling off and it’s lukewarm rather than piping hot. The filling spills a bit out of the sides and the rice isn't sticky enough, but it took Suna nine tries to get it to at least maintain a semi-triangular shape. His mother tried to help, but Suna had dismissed her out of mortification that there was someone witnessing him just short of having a frustrated breakdown over rice.

Osamu stares at it, and Suna shifts uncomfortably. He feels like a little kid offering an adult an unsolicited gift, but without the naivety to be proud about it.

“Suna—”

“You don't have to eat it,” Suna blurts. He cringes at how desperate he sounds. He’s used to being the easygoing one, the indifferent one, the one without much of a reaction other than a lazy eyebrow raise.

But he’s never been indifferent about Osamu. Not since the first day, and not in the days that have followed.

“What is this?” Osamu asks as he turns it around in his hands. 

“It’s onigiri.”

“No shit. I can see it’s an onigiri.” Osamu sniffs at it. “What’s the occasion?”

Suna shrugs again. “You’re gonna be cooking for a lot of people, aren’t you?” Suna shrugs, hoping to pass it off as casual, and that Osamu won’t be able to see the amount of affection he’d poured into each individually crafted onigiri. “So. I thought I’d get a head start and return the favor.”

“Sunarin.” Osamu places the onigiri carefully in the box and sets it on his lap. He stares at it with disbelief and wonder, and when he turns to Suna to face him for the first time, Suna sees something else there, too, that somehow settles his nerves while simultaneously lighting them aflame.

They’re still a long ways away from hitting the crossroads they’ll inevitably reach once they graduate high school. The future is uncertain, but Suna knows Osamu will be a part of it one way or another.

“Just so you know, that isn’t free.” Suna swallows and tries to make light of it, but it’s hard to do when Osamu’s gaze refuses to waver. “I expect you to come to all of my games so you can watch me kick your brother’s ass.”

Osamu reaches a hand over and pauses for a millisecond before his fingers wrap around Suna’s palm. His fingers are sticky from the rice but his palm is warm, thumb pressing down on the vein traversing the back of Suna’s hand. It doesn’t matter that it’s not a particularly significant touch. It sets Suna off just the same.

“Thank you,” Osamu says, and Suna’s heart soars.

Suna lifts the corner of his mouth in a smile, one that Osamu returns without hesitation. Osamu offers him an onigiri (to which Suna politely rejects; he’s already overstuffed himself while taste tasting). Osamu bites into it, grin growing wider by the second, and Suna relaxes. It’s a relief, seeing Osamu like this, onigiri in hand, Suna by his side, and it’s a comforting reassurance that, despite the impending change that glimmers in the near future, it’s not the end for either of them—and it won't be, at least for a while.


End file.
